


Five Times Joe Kissed Nicky (And One Time Nicky Kissed Him First)

by sheafrotherdon



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Kissing, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:15:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25535695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheafrotherdon/pseuds/sheafrotherdon
Summary: Joe takes the last watch, sitting by the fire, eyes trained on the stars as he listens for intrusion. None comes. He is left in peace to reacquaint himself with Al-Dubb Ak-Bar, Al-Hamal, Ad-Dulfin, and to think of their names in other tongues—The Plough, Aries, Delphinius. As they stretch over and above him, shifting as though some great wind blows them to a new course across the sky, he smiles and thinks of Malta. Such stars that night.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 69
Kudos: 764





	Five Times Joe Kissed Nicky (And One Time Nicky Kissed Him First)

1.

Joe takes the last watch, sitting by the fire, eyes trained on the stars as he listens for intrusion. None comes. He is left in peace to reacquaint himself with Al-Dubb Ak-Bar, Al-Hamal, Ad-Dulfin, and to think of their names in other tongues—The Plough, Aries, Delphinius. As they stretch over and above him, shifting as though some great wind blows them to a new course across the sky, he smiles and thinks of Malta. Such stars that night.

As they dim, as the world reveals itself in odd shapes of darkest grey, he wakes Andy with a quiet good morning, rests a hand on Nile’s shoulder to bring her back from sleep, crouches by Nicky and kisses his fingertips before glancing them over Nicky’s forehead. “ _Subah alkhyr habib,_ ” he coaxes. Nicky grumbles predictably, and opens one eye.

“It cannot be,” he mumbles.

“Come, you can see the sun rise.”

Nicky swears at him softly but colorfully, and Joe laughs, crosses back to his seat by the fire and begins the work of brewing the strong, black coffee that will ease them into the day. Andy is already standing, stretching her arms toward the fading beauty of Al-Asad. She dusts off her clothes and comes to sit beside Joe, says nothing, but eagerly takes the first cup he pours from the pot.

Nile sits with them, and they contemplate the low fire in silence, sipping the bitter brew. It takes much longer for Nicky to join them, pushing back his hood from his face. Joe pours the last of the coffee into an enameled cup that he holds just beyond Nicky’s reach. Andy laughs, and Nicky sighs and, with a smile, leans in to kiss Joe gently. 

“Now it is a good morning,” Joe says, satisfied, and Nicky drinks his coffee, humming his appreciation.

2.

Joe watches as the guard assigned to his cell tilts his head. There’s a radio clipped to his tac vest and though Joe can hear little but the static wash of its use, he knows the others have arrived by the surprise on the guard’s face, the staccato rhythm of his orders, and his nervous glance in Joe’s direction. Joe rolls his shoulders, shifts his head from side to side to pop the vertebrae in his neck. “News?” he calls out cheerfully.

“Quiet,” the guard snaps, crossing the room. “You’re coming with me.” He takes the keys from his belt and fumbles one into the lock.

Joe nods lazily, feigning disinterest. He thinks he hears the rumble of a distant explosion. “Okay.”

The guard pauses before opening the cell door. “No funny business.”

“Believe me, there is nothing comedic about this situation,” Joe says deadpan, although he knows he will tell this story with delight for years. The utter ineptitude of the whole organization, from the design of their compound—he spotted at least three unintended kill zones on his way to the cell—to their inability to recognize the tracker hidden in a button on his jeans is amusing as hell. “Where are we going?” It’s always nice to make conversation.

The guard opens the cell door and gestures with his gun. “None of your business.”

Joe cocks his head—definitely an explosion that time—and for a second the guard’s attention is on the noise and not on Joe. Joe quickly and competently breaks his arm, kicks him soundly in the groin, picks up his gun and points it directly at his head. 

When the door to the cell block caves in, Joe barely flinches. “There’s just me,” he shouts to the others as they scatter to secure the room. The guard raises his good hand, gaze darting between Andy, Nile, and Nicky, and back to Joe.

“How did you . . .” he begins to ask.

“Shut up,” says Joe, lowering his gun. He turns to the others. “He needs medical attention.”

“He trip?” Andy asks, lifting her chin to gesture toward the guard.

“In a manner of speaking,” Joe offers, grinning. He checks the clip on his new acquired weapon, crosses over to where Nicky’s standing and settles his hand at the back of his neck before pulling him into a kiss. He feels on top of the world. “You took your time,” he says when they part.

“We were eating dinner,” Nile says evenly. “You think about that when you got yourself abducted?”

Joe takes Nicky’s hand in his, examining a healing bruise and closing cut. He kisses both spots. “You save me some?”

“Not a chance,” Nicky says, grinning, and Joe smiles back.

3.

You go first,” says Joe, gesturing toward the shower. “I’ll check in with Copley.” 

Nicky peels out of his black hoodie and examines the clean cut that splits the fabric over one shoulder. “I liked this hoodie,” he says with a sigh, before wadding it up in his hands and throwing toward a corner of the room.

Joe nods sympathetically. “Your trousers too.” He points to the smattering of bullet holes up and down both legs of Nicky’s cargo pants. He smiles. “Expensive business, this saving people shit.”

Nicky laughs as he heads toward the bathroom. “You should print that on a business card, Joe.”

Joe grins and checks the seat of his pants for blood before he sits on the bed. The burner phone he’s had in his pocket since morning is miraculously undamaged, and he flips it open, dials Copley’s answering service and leaves a one-word message before he closes it up. Copley will make contact when it’s safe. Joe tosses the phone aside and lies back across the mattress, sinking slightly into the opulent duvet. “Mmmmph,” he groans, muscles sore and cuts still healing. He could fall asleep in a heartbeat, but if he can just stir himself, shower too, the sleep will be all the better for his being clean and wrapped around Nicky, the way that he prefers.

Joe leverages himself up onto his elbows, sits up and bends to unfasten his boots. Even the laces are tacky with blood, and Joe pulls a face, kicks them off and makes swift work of the rest of his clothing. He wanders into the bathroom, feeling bone tired, his thoughts sluggish, and takes a look at himself in the mirror, at the still-yellow bruise in the center of his chest from the butt of the other guy’s gun, the puckered flesh at his hip where a bullet had exited. The exit wound—red and sore—smooths and heals even as he watches it. He rubs the spot with his hand, musing on the inexplicable _something_ that courses through his body, then blows out a breath and crosses to open the shower door.

Nicky has his head tipped back under the spray, blood washing from his hair, his skin, as Joe pulls the door closed. “You’re hogging the water,” Joe says, leaning in to kiss the damp curve of Nicky’s shoulder.

Nicky shivers. “You could’ve waited your turn,” he offers with a smirk, and Joe leans in to kiss his teasing mouth. Nicky’s lips part as he wraps his arms around Joe’s back, and they kiss slowly, Joe touching his tongue to Nicky’s tongue and thrilling at Nicky’s soft moan. They’re unhurried, in almost deliberate counterpoint to all the coiled, precise energy they’d expended at the raid.

“I love you,” Joe murmurs as they pull apart, feeling suddenly aching, vulnerable, and raw. It grabs him, sometimes, the depth of his feeling, catches him when the adrenaline of healing fades and there’s time to rest, demands his honesty. “Beyond all the words I have.”

Nicky smiles softly. “That’s a lot of words.”

“Nicolò . . .”

“ _Sei il mio cuore_ ,” Nicky says back, lifting his hands to frame Joe’s face.

And Joe leans in to kiss the mouth that can speak such words of comfort, that can heal his heart’s bruises from a millennium’s unceasing war.

4\. 

Joe is in his element with the two older children, sitting cross-legged on the floor with them amid blocks and the disconnected pieces of a wooden train track, telling stories of far-away places that are more than half true. He embellishes his tales of pirates with the presence of sea monsters, and thinks of the years when such creatures seemed more probable than not, stirring the waves to swallow boats whole. When the pirate king takes the children hostage, Joe does every voice. He has always loved the voices, his memory supplying hazy recollections of other children sitting on his lap, and at his knee, listening to stories of heroism and intrigue.

Nicky appears once every few minutes, pacing the length of the hallway, back and forth, the youngest child in his arms. She’s a mere baby, and hungry, Joe thinks, but there’s nothing to give her save the comfort of a stranger. Nicky shushes her sweetly, noses her head, murmurs poetry he’s picked up in a dozen different languages as he carries her from the room where Joe sits to some distant point further in the house.

Joe uses his hands to swoop like the winged creatures of his story, and the children laugh as he tickles them, as he dramatizes the great battles that were fought on this island, as he leads them over the sofa and the ottoman and the chair, wielding their make-believe swords as heroes might. They collapse afterwards, one child then the other laying their head on his knee, on his thigh, and falling asleep. He is trapped by trust, he thinks, heart swelling with gratitude, and looks up as Nicky wanders back into the room again, a sleeping child against his shoulder.

Nicky raises an eyebrow at the rumpled couch cushions, the blankets strewn over the floor, the sleeping kids, but his gaze is loving. Joe brings his hand to his mouth, kisses his fingers and blows affection across the room to Nicky, who smiles and shifts to settle in a chair.

Joe’s heart does something complicated, squeezing hard at the picture Nicky makes, and he thinks of the fatherhood that has always been beyond their reach. He watches Nicky as Nicky tips back his head and closes his eyes, and when Nicky begins to snore gently, he shakes his head and smiles, looks out of the window and waits for Andy and Nile to return.

5\. 

Joe does not expect to be reunited with Nicky in the middle of a firefight on the twenty-sixth floor of an office building in Shanghai, but it is what it is. 

“Now?” Joe yells, picking off two of the private security personnel who are trying to kill them. Much good it will do.

Nicky grins at him from behind the reception desk. “My flight was delayed.”

“I swear to god, Nicolò di Genova . . .” Joe slides an abandoned gun across the floor to him.

“I could not miss the fun!” Nicky shoots two security guards neatly, rolls to the left and takes out a third from behind an office chair.

“Stay focused,” yells Andy, pulling her labrys from her back. “For fuck’s sake. Where’s Nile?”

“Disabling the . . .”

The locked door ahead of them buzzes and swings open.

Andy grins. “Go Nile,” she says, and then she’s running.

“Fuck,” Joe says fervently, scrambling to his feet and racing after her, Nicky covering his six. There’s the sound of glass breaking, two bursts of gunfire, and then Nicky’s right behind him, hitting the button that will lock them inside the inner office. Joe has so many questions.

“Nile will meet us on the rooftop,” Nicky offers, cheerfully. “I believe she has arranged our getaway.”

“You found all this out when?” Joe asks.

“A few moments ago—I used the back stairs of course and she . . .” Nicky’s explanation comes to an abrupt halt as Joe grabs him by the collar with one hand and reels him in to kiss him furiously. “Uh huh,” Nicky manages when they break apart.

“You said it would be four weeks and it’s been . . .”

“Four and three days, I know . . .”

“And then you show up and . . .”

“Joe.”

Joe swallows hard and nods.

“I’m sorry. And now we have to run.”

Andy looks back at them both from where she’s been studying the ceiling. “We done?”

“We are NOT done,” Joe offers.

“We’re done,” says Nicky, smiling, and then they’re running again, like always, toward something beautiful and strange and unpredictable, with pissed-off, amoral, special-force operatives at their heels.

6.

“Yusuf,” Nicky murmurs. “Yusuf, wake up,”

Joe knows he has to listen, has to open his eyes and reassure Nicky that he’s okay, but the pain is excruciating, radiating from his hip to his arm, discouraging even the smallest movement. 

“I know you can hear me,” Nicky says. 

Joe feels a glancing kiss to his forehead, to his cheek. He tries to inhale a steadying breath, but gasps instead, pain cutting through his resolve.

“That’s it.” Nicky sounds calm and patient. “You are healing, _mi amor,_ I promise you.”

Joe swears bitterly. “Fuck,” he manages, opening his eyes a fraction.

Nicky’s eyes are shining, and he blows out a long unsteady breath. “Hallo.”

“What –”

“A bomb.” Nicky drops a soft kiss to his mouth, smooths a hand through Joe’s hair. “The people who . . . they are dealt with.”

Joe winces as he tries to lift his head. 

“Not yet, not yet,” Nicky says softly. “Rest a moment more.”

Joe blinks, squints and focuses his eyes on Andy who’s standing above them both.

“I killed them,” she says simply.

“I killed them, too,” says Nile, moving into Joe’s field of vision.

Joe nods and wets his lips. “That’s good.” The pain is a little less overwhelming, and though it hurts, he fumbles a hand to fist his fingers in Nicky’s sleeve and pulls himself to sit. There’s a gaping wound in his side, and another at his hip. “Shit.”

Nicky sits down beside him, takes his hand in his and kisses it. “You took a long time to come back.”

“I did?” Joe remembers nothing of the bomb, of their waiting.

Andy nods.

“Sorry, guys.” Joe feels inexplicably guilty. “I . . . I guess . . .”

“Don’t do that again,” Nile says, chin angled defiantly.

Joe nods, bowing his head under all she feels and isn’t saying, then turns to look at Nicky, who is scrubbing a hand across his face. “You – “

“I am very glad to see you,” Nicky says, half smiling, and when he shifts to kiss Joe’s temple Joe leans into it, squeezing their clasped hands in gratitude.

“You think you can walk?” Andy asks.

Joe looks at the now much smaller wound in his side. “Maybe.”

Nicky gets to his feet and crouches, pulling Joe’s arm across his shoulders. “On three?”

“On three,” Joe agrees, and when Nicky pulls him up exactly as he said he would he swears in two languages, finishes with “motherfuck . . .” and grits his teeth against the hot, bright tears at the back of his eyes.

“Hush,” Nicky murmurs. “We have you now” And this time when he kisses Joe it isn’t careful, and it’s everything, and Joe loves him so much he doesn’t know how his heart doesn’t crack in two. He could never leave him, regrets even the moments he made him wait on this return.

Andy ducks under his other arm and helps take his weight. “Let’s get out of here,” she says warmly, and Nile smiles, and Joe tilts his head to lean into Nicky. Everything hurts, but his family is safe, and by the force of his love for them he will make it okay.

**Author's Note:**

> with gratitude to siria for beta!


End file.
